MoCo to charge for dog parks

By
Washington Post editors

It will now cost you $40 if you want to let your pooch roam in Montgomery County's dog parks, Fox 5 reports.

And that's just for the first dog.

Signs have been posted at five local dog parks to let owners know that a leash-free run through the park will no longer be free. Residents now have to pay an annual $40 fee for the first dog and $5 annually for each additional dog.

It's one of the ways the county is trying to raise money. The County Council adopted a $4.27 billion budget for fiscal 2011 in May that trimmed spending by $203 million, or 4.5 percent, from what it approved last year.

How about if Montgomery County charged each illegal alien a $5000 annual fee for use of the schools, the hospitals, the parks, the soccer fields, and the jails? The budget problems would be licked for sure.

YIKES! I just got my real estate bill for my modest home in Silver Spring...over $5000!!! And IF I had a dog to take to the dog park, I'd have to fork over even more. What about postisarag's ideas...seems fair to me. Why single out dog owners...dogs make noise and make their owners safer in their homes. Any way we can charge cat owners for collection of the litter?

I don't have a problem with the fee - although I would like 50% portion to be mandated for the dogparks themselves. And I would love it if the county could get ONE that is in Silver Spring, rather than all up county.

This is just crazy...I don't live in MontCo. anymore nor do I own a dog...but the idea of charging the public to use public space is ridiculous...and $40...that's like going to a matinee movies four times. The govt has overspent and over committed taxpayer money so now they're trying to find every way to nickle and dime people.

I agree with the above ideas. The only (possible) upside is that maybe this will keep some of the less responsible dog owners away? In the last year we have had an influx of more aggressive dogs and owners that had no idea how to handle them. Maybe it's just wishful thinking...I do agree with postisarag.

I could only support this, if they were also going to
begin using electronic access cards to make this park
safer by enforcing the fee and the registration process .

The other obvious problem with this fee, is that people
with tiny dogs that use a small portion of the park will
have to pay the same amount as people using the much
larger, large dog area.

And there is also no discount for residents of
Montgomery County. So a resident with 1 tiny dog
will have to pay $40 and a non-resident with 3 large
dogs will only have to pay $50. What idiot came up
with this fee schedule ?

These parks will not be made any safer by simply
charging a fee and this seems like a ripoff to me.

What about the taxes we have been paying over the years for this park amenity? Why single out dog parks for this special treatment? There are plenty of other amenities such as playgrounds, sports facilities, etc. that also require maintenance but they remain free to the public. The Gaithersburg dog park is free to its tax paying residents, but now not those dogs parks of Montgomery County, whose residents likewise have been paying their taxes over the years for the construction and maintenance of these facilities. Consider the Black Hill dog park, which is a decent drive for anyone to use. We would go there maybe a couple of times a year for a once-in-a-while experience for our dogs and also when we had a new puppy to help it learn to socialize with other dogs. Now it is too expensive for such occasional usage. Will onetime tickets be offered? That could possibly make it feasible for intermittent users, and there are many many such users. Regardless, the basic injustice is why are dog-owner tax payers being discriminated against with this new add-on tax? And also, having our police monitor the canine visitors to these dog runs to assure that those fast-moving fur-obscured small tags are not just “name tags” but in fact “legal dog-park-admission tags” is a shortsighted (plainly stupid) use of their time and a waste in itself of a limited expensive resource whose tax dollars to support could just as well go toward leaving these facilities to run free for the general public.